"Then to side with Truth is noble, when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just."
But to men of delicate nerves it was not sharing Truth's crust that made the difficulty so much as the other uncongenial company at her august table. The political anti-slavery men, who came later, and who won the triumph, had none of these uncomely surroundings, although at the beginning they encountered as much odium.
When the first gun was fired on Fort Sumter, the cause of the slave and of the despised Abolitionists became the cause of all. Then could be felt the force of the sentiment which long before had won the pitying muse of Longfellow, which had inspired the strains of Lowell, and which had led the Quaker Whittier--minstrel and prophet at once--into the thick of the strife. Then it could be seen that the cause of eternal justice was not to be confounded with the vagaries of half-crazed agitators who were bent on curing all human ills by moral suasion and bran bread. The thunder of cannon cleared the atmosphere. The querulous voices of sectaries were hushed. The hearts of the loyal North throbbed as one heart. There was but one cry, and it was "Union and Liberty."
In a high sense this was a decisive period in the life of Holmes. From the outbreak of the war he took an enthusiastic part as a patriot for the preservation of the Union. His eldest son, now a Justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, went out with the volunteers as a captain, and the father's "Hunt" for him after a battle is well remembered by readers of the _Atlantic_. At the time when the bravest of all classes were going forward to form new regiments and to fill up the shattered lines of the older ones, his lyrics came to the souls of loyal men with thrills of exultation. No man in those gloomy days could read them without tears, I have seen suppressed sobs and eyes glistening in tear-mist when they were sung in public assemblies. The people of this land have had no such time of heartache, of alternate dread and solemn joy, since the Revolution. When the fate of a nation was in suspense, when death had claimed a member from almost every family, and when the bitter struggle was to be fought out man to man, the phrases we might idly read in time of peace had a new and startling meaning. The words flashed in all eyes and set all hearts on fire. These songs of the war by Holmes will take their place with the grand and touching ode of Lowell, and with the stately and triumphal "Laus Deo!" of Whittier.